Embacle
by mimosa eyes
Summary: "I know how it is to reach a point where you'd be willing to, oh, I don't know..." He pauses as if he has to search his mind for an apt example. "Freeze water pipes just to feel a little less invisible?" Post-movie: restoration of the Tooth Palace.


**Chronologically after my other RotG fic, _Naught_, but standalone. Written for Black Licorice Addict. Happy birthday!**

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The sky around her blighted Tooth Palace is once again teeming with fairies. Today however, they dart quickly about not to elude Nightmares, but to meticulously restore each golden case of teeth to its rightful drawer. Their industrious energy is complemented by the temporary requisition of North's sleigh, which Bunny and Jack constantly reload with precious cargo to be further sorted in mid-air. It is a tedious process; yet Tooth calculates that with the European Division chipping in, and Sandy aiding a small collection team wherever it is night, they will soon achieve their goal.

"Looking good," Jack declares presently, in serendipitous confirmation of her estimate. His deep voice issues from just behind her, and Tooth turns to find him leaning against a great pillar, arms crossed loosely over his chest and grinning in that special way he had, pearly whites peeping out from behind permanently chapped lips.

"That's the last batch," he adds to explain his presence (and idleness), inclining his chin slightly to indicate the approaching sleigh.

Tooth nods, flashing him a quick smile and holding up a finger to indicate, _One moment._ She then consults a clipboard, noting something or other down with an absentminded look. All the while his gaze lingers on her, unconsciously noting details he already has memorized: her delicately thin golden bracelets and anklets, the drapery feathers that start at her waistline and attenuate to slender tips around her knees. The dusting of pink upon her eyelids, augmenting her violet irises.

As if sensing his scrutiny, Tooth looks up briefly then, pen still poised. He immediately looks askance, the corner of his mouth quirking with the conviction that his reflexive moment has only solidified the fact of his guilt. He just misses the way she holds her back a little straighter, and ruffles out the feathers on her shoulders.

"Jack," Tooth finally calls, eyes bright and distinctly lucid now that her supervising duties have been largely fulfilled. She hands her clipboard to a nearby group of skiving fairies, who squeak indignantly and pretend to struggle with keeping its weight aloft.

Ever the disciplinarian, Tooth continues as if uninterrupted, "I wanted to thank you."

Jack suppresses the urge to groan. "Tooth, you've already thanked us _hundreds_ of times for helping out. It's really the least we could do—"

His next words are cut off by a flit of blue and green darting into the folds of his hood. Jack smiles turning his head a little to the left to peek at a contented Baby Tooth.

"Baby Tooth told me you tried to keep her warm." Tooth says then, while Jack is distracted. "In the crevice, I mean. After Pitch..." Her voice peters out, succumbing to silence as she realizes what she is inadvertently breaching. Jack's eyes go steely, their cerulean depths seeming to frost over.

_"You don't have to be _alone_, Jack." Pitch drawled, letting the words taunt and tempt him. "What goes better together than cold, and dark?"_

"No problem," Jack manages. His chest twinges with the lie, the same way it did when Pitch broke his staff — the pain akin to an echo, or a sigh, that zigzags through him. "I didn't, though— I mean, I _couldn't _— keep her warm. Just... cold."

"But you _tried_," Tooth emphasizes. There's something in the way he's let his shoulders droop, something in the quiet strain of his neck muscles, that makes her tone suddenly emphatic, urgent. "Just like when the Nightmares were carrying off my fairies. The sky was _festering _with them, Jack, and amidst all that, with the odds impossibly against you, your _instinct _was to save whoever you could. Even one tiny life was worth risking yours."

Jack shifts under her unwavering gaze, unused to anyone's attention being focused on him for so extended a period. The uncharacteristic hardness is still there in his eyes, a telltale manifestation of his harsh thoughts.

"May I—?" Tooth starts. She leaves the question hanging, simply drifting a little closer to Jack's staff, so innocuous in his firm grip. He hesitates a fraction of a moment longer than she expected, and she almost pulls back again, but then he's holding out his staff and she can't tell if she's shivering because of the marginally colder aura about him, or from the thrill of knowing he trusts her with something so integral and personal to him. Perhaps a little of both.

Whatever she was expecting — visible splinters, perhaps, or some other sign of a breakage — it isn't there. The trademark dusting of tiny ice crystals extends over the entire wooden surface, accentuating contours and embellishing the otherwise plain staff. Idly she notes out of the corner of her eye how Jack is so used to wielding his staff that after releasing it, his fingers remain naturally curled, and his hands don't know quite what to do with themselves. That is, until Baby Tooth flutters down to nestle in them, at which point Jack cups his palms together, the better to frame her.

The subtle protectiveness underlying the action doesn't escape her; she's seen it so many times over the past few days. In the almost goofy smile he got seeing Sophie having fun in Bunny's Warren, in the hug he shared with Jaime, his first believer, on the frozen lake that was so central to his life. And in more pointed ways, too, like his reaction at Sandy's defeat. Enraged and grieved, Jack sent silvery frost spreading like a lovely contagion over Pitch's dark dreamsand, shattering it easily. _Ruthless and reflexive. As if for a moment no longer able to hold in the cold. As if he has long accepted the blizzards and iciness as being _part _of him _— and now carries all their severity and storminess inside, not _beneath _the mischief and fun-loving, as some might think, but as a _facet _of it.

She sets the staff down leaning against the pillar.

"Jack—" Tooth begins to say, touching his arm, but he turns roughly away. At the jolting motion, Baby Tooth gives an involuntary squeak of alarm. Instantly he reins in his sudden ire. "Sorry, Baby Tooth," Jack quietly apologizes after a moment's pause. His eyes lose their steely appearance, softening as he idly strokes the top of the fairy's head with his index finger. "Sorry," he says again, and he seems to be apologizing to the both of them.

For him it seems easier, somehow, to address the tiny fairy now in his lap, and the admission he has been holding in throughout the sleigh ride to the North Pole trails out after the apology.

"When Pitch was..." Jack begins, then stops abruptly, unable to continue the sentence. "What I mean is — I _know _how it is to reach a point where you'd be willing to, oh, I don't know..." He pauses as _if_ he has to search his mind for an apt example. "Freeze water pipes _just_ to feel a little less invisible?"

Jack's index finger hovers over the golden feather on Baby Tooth's head, quivering slightly but not from cold.

"And Pitch understood that, too. I just— I _watched _him being dragged away by his own Nightmares, and I thought... that could easily have been me."

He falls silent then. Jack doesn't react, initially, when Tooth reaches forward to hold his free hand. Then his eyes go wide. Whereas his skin is cool and smooth, hers is warm and feathery, redolent of something familiar yet unidentifiable. Hesitantly, gingerly, he tightens his grip over hers.

"One thing you learn when you work with teeth long enough, Jack," Tooth murmurs, "is that: sometimes, in order to get stronger, things need to come apart first. Teeth _have _to fall out, and maybe your staff _had _to be broken—" she draws a deep breath before plunging into the crux of the issue: "—and maybe you _had _to see all the ways you're similar to Pitch. So you'd know you're different after all."

Frost has begun forming over their hands, and Jack breaks the connection, wincing in embarrassment. Tooth wipes at her hand distractedly, getting her feathers damp as the ice melts due to her body warmth. Meanwhile Baby Tooth blinks up at Jack, then zips into his hoodie's muff. A faint clinking reminds him that his case of teeth is still tucked inside it.

Barely registering the action, yet acknowledging its _rightness_, Jack reaches for the case. He looks it over a final time, then presents it to Tooth with an air of finality, of farewell.

Taken aback, she examines the small picture on the end of it. "Brown hair," she announces needlessly. "Cute."

They laugh, not knowing quite why but not wanting to, either.

"Don't you need this, though?" Tooth asks, when she realizes his intention.

"I _want _to leave my memories with you. For safe-keeping."

"Are you sure?" Tooth presses. "You've been in the dark for three hundred years."

And his mind returns to the memory of his sister, and the games he _knows _he played with her even if he doesn't remember them. He tries to imagine how many children would have been deprived of the snowballs and fun times they so undeservedly deserved, if Jack Frost spent every waking moment mulling over the past.

"Hey," Jack replies lightheartedly, cracking a trademark half-grin, "at least it gives me a reason to visit often."

She smiles wryly. "How else would I stay in touch, if you keep wandering around?" She has the sense to ignore the momentary surprise on his visage.

Jack looks thoughtful for a moment. "Just tell the wind you're looking for me."

And that's it, that's the last time they bring it up. The wind picks Jack up and he goes off to make it snow in some unsuspecting continent whose people would spend weeks lobbying for actions to curb climate change. She watches his silhouette get smaller and smaller, before smiling to herself and returning to her work.

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**Generally, RotG fics challenge my descriptive abilities: I'd appreciate critique on them. Keep an eye out for more!**

**m.e.**


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